Dance with joy, dance with freedom

When I was in middle school, our community had a talent show. I prepared a dance routine, but few friends delivered the heart-breaking news that the dance was rather awful, so it was a no-go and it was deleted from the list. Instead I was offered to anchor the talent show which felt like an insult and a step-down. But, I didn’t have a choice but to abide by the seemingly popular verdict of my community friends. This experience dealt a severe blow to my perception of my capabilities as a dancer and I never came out of my cocoon whenever an opportunity for dance arose.

After I got married, I used to frequently sing along the song- “I hope you dance”. My husband once remarked that “It’s ironical that you love that song so much, but you never actually Dance”. I was puzzled by the rebuke; the song was a metaphor and maybe he skipped English class where the power of metaphor was taught. Metaphor is a figure of speech and should not be taken literally. But the remark felt like a stinging blow and I resolved to take dance lessons.

Off I went to the dance class. The teacher loved dancing and I could see her transcend into a trans on certain dance numbers. This love for dance was admirable and also visibly evident in one of my twin daughter. She dances while brushing teeth and even while she is doing math on the bed! Dance is like a current that is always flowing through her, if music is playing she cannot sit still, she must dance!

However, mine was a different story. It’s extremely hard for an analytical mind to memorize totally random dance moves. Left foot right arm sometime and reverse order the other time, why? I was lost in these combinations and the angles of the stances for myriad moves. Once my teacher asked me to be on a lookout for a beat to make the next dance move. It was like looking for hay not needle in a hay-stack; with only subtle differences in length and breadth of the blade to find. The transitory beat amongst a whirlpool of beats remained elusive to me. I worked hard but it felt like hard-work; wasn’t it supposed to be fun? Luckily the universe didn’t want me to learn dance either as two years in a the row dance recital date collided with work related milestone date. My dance teacher did suggest talking to my company to reschedule but I was aware that priority of my dance recital was infinitesimally low from company’s perspective; much like a mere mortal like me in our expansive universe. Voila! Circumstances made me choose between work and dance class, since work paid for the dance lesson, the choice was easy.

I have become cognizant that while everyone can dance, dancing with grace is either an in-born talent or requires dedicated learning. “Klutz” was the name a colleague suggested to name our tribe of un-coordinated dance challenged folks. We had a gala time picking an apt but cool and obscure name.

Now, dancing to my own clumsy moves has become fun. So my good fellas find your tribe hold their hands and dance off-beat if you must, but I hope you dance. Dance with joy, dance with freedom and don’t care if anyone is watching; maybe they too belong to our tribe and are watching to know if anyone is watching them!

I was born in India and did my masters in Technology from IIT Delhi. I live in Atlanta with my husband and beautiful twin daughters. I am currently employed as Director, Development at a Atlanta based company. I perceive myself as a Witty Thought Leader but others have remarked that I think too much and my jokes are not that funny.

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